Koasati language
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| Koasati | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | United States | |
| Region: | Elton, Louisiana and Livingston, Texas. | |
| Total speakers: | 200 | |
| Language family: | Muskogean Eastern Muskogean Koasati |
|
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | nai | |
| ISO 639-3: | cku | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
Koasati (usually Coushatta) is a Native American language of Muskogean stock. The language is spoken by the Coushatta people, most of whom live in Allen Parish north of the town of Elton, Louisiana though a smaller number share a reservation near Livingston, Texas with the Alabama people. Linguist Geoffrey Kimball has estimated the number of speakers of the language to be around 400 people with approximately 350 speakers living in Louisiana (Kimball 1991).
Koasati is most closely related to the Alabama language, but though the Coushatta and Alabama have historically lived in proximity to each other, their languages are no longer mutually intelligible without extensive exposure. The language is also related to the Mikasuki language and some native speakers of Coushatta report they have been able to understand Mikasuki even without previous exposure to the language.
One notable feature of the language is that men and women use slightly different grammatical forms of verbs.
[edit] References
- Kimball, Geoffrey D. (1991). Koasati Grammar. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-2725-6.
- Kimball, Geoffrey D. (1994). Koasati Dictionary. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-2726-4.
[edit] External links
- Sovereign Nation of The Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana
- Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Koasati entry
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